"Hum, I'm sure that I bought the standard version, and even if I didn't it still shouldn't be showing so much information. Is it because I overloaded the book? I'll have to try more skill books to see." He continued his thought process as if he wasn't now sitting on the limp bodies of three of his former seniors.
The two that he healed and threw out of his room seemed to have gone for some back up. The new one put up more of a fight, he even managed to partially activate his talent, his skin started to turn a light gray with his defense shooting through the roof.
"Still too weak though, I don't know what the hell are these guys' problems. All it did was make it harder to break his bones." He shook his head in disappointment.
He looked at the older one and made some observations. "And the talent of the new one and one of the old ones look really similar, and now that I look at them they also look kinda similar."
He started laughing hysterically. "Don't tell me he went to bitch and moan to his older brother, only for the both of them to get their asses kicked. Now that's funny."
Wiping his tears away, he laughed for a few more minutes before continuing his train of thought.
"Anyway, if putting more mana into a learned spell makes it more powerful, then maybe putting more mana into a skill book would also lead to a more powerful skill. That's the only explanation that I can come up with."
"The only way I can determine that is by learning a bunch of skills and spells and comparing it to other people. It's gonna be expensive but these three piñatas are providing me with more than enough funds, I hope."
After a bit of research he placed an order for a few of the most popular recommendations for skills and spells for beginners, even if they were difficult to learn. He made sure that there was ample information about them and videos detailing the process and what the end result for them is.
"That should do it. Another $50,000 down the drain." He shook his head. "No, it's investing into my future."
"Wait, one more thing." He placed an order for a basic healing skill called [regeneration]. As its name suggests, all it did was boost the natural rate of regeneration based on the amount of mana poured into it.
As a healing skill it was not only difficult to learn but also extremely time consuming to master. Not everyone had the capabilities to learn every skill and only few had the necessary talent to master them. "Hopefully if I read my talent description correctly, that might not apply to me."
"F*ck me, $50,000? No wonder she asked for so much. And this is a basic skill too, how much more would an advanced one cost? Can't even use it on other people"
Not too long later, with another flash, his order came in and his balance deducted.
"$150,000 left, those books better be worth it." He quickly learnt all the skills in the same manner, overflowing it using all his mana, and all of them gave him a headache. At this point, he was using the head ache to determine if his method was successful or not.
"I won't try it with inventory yet as it is a fundamentally more advanced skill, I'll do a few more experiments."
Spells take time to learn, as unlike skill books, there is no magical bolt of energy that enters his head and forces the knowledge onto him. That method of gaining power is exclusive to awakened, unlike spells which anyone who has grasped mana can learn. Albeit grasping mana without a talent is extremely difficult, every awakened person could do it but only 1 out of 1000 mundanes could do the same. May not seem that uncommon but 1 out of 10 people awakened.
"Okay so I'll need to test my version compared to the normal versions. But how exactly." He glanced over to the skills section of his stat screen.
<[Skills: Analysis, Body Strengthening, Iron skin (C), Create Water (D), Create Fire (D), Stealth (B), Regeneration (C)]>
"Hold on a minute, why are the ranks so high? I bought the cheapest versions. [Create water] and [Create fire] were F rank, [Stealth] was C, and [Regeneration] E rank. And the skill I bought was [Stone Skin] not [Iron Skin]. What is going on?"
He picked up the skill book for [Stone skin] and read through it. Now that it was used, it was no different from a normal book, but he could still find out some clues from it.
"A few of the words are blue in color, but the rest are all grayed out." Quickly putting two and two together he asked himself. "Hold on, are the skill books for powerful skills and their lesser counterparts the same, but with parts of it inactive. Maybe that's why learning the skills like I do creates a higher level skill. When I shove so much mana so quickly into it, then some of the gray words activate., giving me a higher version."
He was still skeptical so he ordered the [Iron skin] book and the higher version [Steal Skin]. While they were being delivered, he tried out his version.
"[Iron Skin]" His veins light up, and his skin slowly turned from brown to a lustrous gray, like shiny metal. He quickly opened up a video showing both [Stone Skin] and [Iron skin].
"Okay, so it's definitely [Iron skin] and not a malfunction of [Analysis]. From the video of [Stone Skin], it looks like white marble and [Iron skin] looks like, well, iron."
With another flash in the corner of the room, the [Iron skin] and [Steal skin] skill books appeared with his balance being deducted. Reading through them, but not activating them, his suspicion was verified. The books were identical in every way except the amount of words that were blue.
"Okay, I'm getting somewhere. So when I pour all my mana into a skill book, then it activates some more of the words and gives me a higher version. This is amazing, I'll only ever have to buy the cheapest versions of a skill and I'll be good."
He paused before contemplating it a bit further. "But if that's the case then why did I get iron skin and not steal skin. And from the books there should be a skill or two above that, why didn't I get those. Did I not pour enough mana into it to activate all the words?"
He browsed through the Universal Auction to see if he could find these higher level skills, and found the [Black Steal skin] book but not the one after that.
"I can assume that the amount of mana that is required to activate the more advanced words would be a lot more, I can barely get to [Iron skin] so I shouldn't need to buy any more of these skills until my capacity increases."
He placed the [Iron skin] book back up for sale, and tried to learn the [Steel Skin] book. He poured all of his mana into it and got the familiar headache.
Re-summoning his stat screen he read:
<[Skills: Analysis, Body Strengthening, Steel skin (B+), Create Water (D), Create Fire (D), Stealth (B), Regeneration (C)]>
"B+?, what the hell. Maybe I didn't have enough mana to fully activate more words but still got a bonus. Since Steel skin is a B rank skill."
He was about to try with another skill but was stopped by a groaning coming from under him.
"Oh, awake already."